Reflection and Refraction
by Xenoglossy
Summary: Duo reflects on life, loss, love and symbolism in war time. Where does the 'God of Death' fit in?


**PRE FIC RANTINGS AND A SPRINKLE OF DISCLAIMER:** I've never really liked Gundam Wing fanfiction much, which is perhaps why I've never completed a fic dedicated to the series. One huge problem I've always had is the fan community in general's inability to potray Duo properally. There's far too many Duo fans out there and not enough of them really interpert his character as the show put him forth. He's either presented as a truly jovial person who has kept his good nature throughout all the killing and blooshed around him; or as a unstable, suicidal, depressed mess who hides under a mask of confidence. Really, the impression I always got before fanfiction skewered my perception was that he's a naturally exuberent person who thinks too hard and dwells often on the dark. So, I wanted to write a fic about Duo thinking because I was interested in the challenge presented by writing him as he is. (By the way, this fic contains implied 3x4. Hardly anymore than the show itself does, mind you. ^ ^)  
I do not in any way, manner or matter own the characters and situations put forth here. (I always feel kind of silly writing disclaimers. I mean, in actuality, who cares?) 

**Reflection and Refraction**  
_Izzy Girl_

Duo stared out at the stars feeling as if he could drown in them. He still hadn't quite gotten used to the way they dotted themselves without rhyme or reason throughout the endless, black horizen of outer space. They seemed caught in their own perpetual dance, yet they never moved nor flinched from their fixed positions. 

Hilde had laughed at him when he told her he felt this way, _'But shouldn't you be used to this?'_ she asked playfully, _'You did grow up in the colonies, after all.'_ There was a difference, though, between the massive control rooms on a space station of ship and the closed, confined ecosystem of American born colony L2. It was an unnaturally clean city with tall buildings, a seedy underbelly and a fake sky that spread out above you, that same dull-gray both day and night. 

Duo had first been a street kid, spending most of his time dodging in and out between the alley-ways and getting himself into whatever mischeif he could manage. He spent his adolescence inside a church, hardly seeing even the world beyond the cathedral walls. Truthfully, he'd only ever caught a few glimpses of the vast emptiness beyond the chrome plated sheilding of L2 and the first time he'd ever seen outer space in all it's empty, dizzying glory was when he first took Deathscythe from her hanger. 

He'd flicked on the visual array and gasped at the beauty and power of it all, his dark blue eyes widening and his body growing ridgid. He'd never imagined something like this- only the void and those tiny points of far off light all around him, enveloping him and crushing him beneath the weight of their overbearing signifigance. For the first time he realized that he was nothing. 

Proffesor S broke his revier far too soon with a sharp reprimend, reminding him that there was work to be done and little time to do it in, but that moment stayed with Duo throughout the next few months whether he was on Earth casting a stray glance towards the first evening star, or engraged deep in a battle with darkness pressing in on him from all sides. 

Fitting that this should be the place for this defining battle of human's history, perhaps the final true war their foolish race would ever fight for this was a battle of ideals and morals, not land, riches or politics. This was the final desicive moment in the age-old conflict between pacifism and warmonging. Duo nearly laughed at they irony, because in the end those that wanted peace were fighting for a chance to attain it. 

From where he leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and eyes lazily tracing the patterns of stars that would be constellations from Earth, Duo could see the visages of Trowa and Quatre reflected in the tall, dark window. They were sitting opposite each other in dining hall, engaged in a quiet but seemingly important conversation during which Quatre had the most say, occasionally gesturing with his hands between taking sips out of his ever present coffee mug. Trowa would just smile that enigmatic half-grin of his and nod somberly. When he spoke his scarce words, Quatre stared at him from under a blonde mess of unkempt bangs with the raptest of attention apparent in his gaze. 

This meeting of the minds gave Duo pause for thought. He found himself thinking far too much lately, and this made him uncomfortable as he'd learned long ago that his mind, when left up to it's own devices, often wandered into places he'd much rather steer clear of. His subconciousness had a taste for the dark and melanchony that he didn't care for, so he avoided the activity as streniously as possible. Talking was always a good way to do this; studying, sports and watching the vids. Even fixing up Deathscythe was worth a good hour or two's worth of healthy distraction. 

Unfortunately, with the final assault of Fortress Libra drawing nearer with every passing night Duo found it increasingly hard to keep his mind occupied and had spent the past few evenings staring out the starscape and writing disjointed essays on war ethics across the walls of his head. Tonight, however, was different. Having exhausted all other subjects, his rambling brain had fallen back into a most obvious topic of analyzation- being the phsycological profiling of himself and his fellow Gundam pilots. 

Watching Quatre smile shyly over his mug at the mysterious Heavyarms pilot brought the thought to his mind: _'We all represent something in this war.'_ They all had their place and purpose in the grand scheme of things that suited them so perfectly, the history books a hundred years in the future might refuse to believe that their true personalities were their own, and not myth born from years of people retelling the story incorrectly. 

Heero had practically been molded for that purpose. He was a child taken in a trained from a young age to be a warrior in the fight for pacifism. He even used the name of a famous pacifist politician who had been assasinated in an attempt to repress the colonies. Duo wondered if the ironic juxtaposition was lost on Doctor J, or if the scientist had intended it when he sent his boy wonder off to seek violent revenge using the name of one opposed to violence. 

Heero lived for the fight. He breathed it in as a lifeforce and fought so magnificently that one would think nothing else mattered to him. But Duo had noticed a substantial change in the mildly-insane assasin throughout their chance meetings over the past few months. It was if the more he fought, the more he understood the meaning behind war. He watched through those creepy, soulless eyes and saw the pattern of battle weaving and threading itself into and around lives, people and events and the more he saw war's inner workings the less he needed it and the more he cared about other things. 

Counterpoint to this was the icy and unapproachable Chang Wufei who, despite being the most focused person Duo had met in his entire life, was a loose cannon in battle- wild, unpredictable and quite fond of debating top-heavy philosophical issues in the heat of things. Duo had become aquainted with the testy chinese boy during their near-deadly imprisoment at Lunar Base during the twilight days of the Romafeller Foundation. His first impression was that Wufei was quite literally something else. Always calm and collected, perfectly cool in every and all situations, but when engaged in battle it was almost like something possesed him. It was like he had come into the war with his own personal understanding of man's inclination towards violence, but as he was constantly placed in the throes of it, the threads all unravelled and he started to lose himself everytime his hands closed around the cold controls of his beloved and hated Gundam. 

Duo wondered if the war really was changing Wufei, or if it was a natural reaction for someone entrusted with such enormous power like that of a Mobile Suit capable of the destruction a Gundam was capable of. Even the mild-natured, empathetic Quatre had at times thrown away all consideration for the life of his foe. Once, he had even knowingly seeked out targets and caused death and misery intentionally, with full knowledge of what he was doing. 

True, he'd only recently heard about the affair secondhand from Quatre himself, but the entire thing had struck Duo as revelation. War had it's way of picking out those few undesirable traits a person will try to supress and exploit them to their fullest. And then again, sometimes war brought out the best in people. 

_"Trowa's words brought me back to my senses. His sacrifice saved my soul."_

Quatre had a way of saying things that made them sound so important. Duo always wondered what exactly Trowa had saved Quatre's soul from, veering away from the idea of dammnation since he wasn't sure how devout a muslim the blonde boy actually was. Perhaps Quatre feared that at some point he had crossed a line where there was no return, no reprieve from all the horrors he'd commited and all the pain he'd inflicted upon the very innocents he had meant to protect. 

What Duo had really wanted to say was: _'Deal with it, Quatre. We've all got blood on our hands. Just because you're a true pacifist doesn't make your job any cleaner the the rest of our's.'_ but he held his tounge and simply nodded slowly in acknowledgment. Quatre was firm with resolve and solidly stuck in his ideals and aspirations. Everyone listened to him, but still there was something decidely fragile about him. Maybe it was the way he would fold his pale hands in his lap when he wasn't speaking, or perhaps it was how his bangs fell so that they hid his strange, blue-green eyes, but Duo would have felt guilty forcing the boy to take such responsibility for sins they had all commited. 

Movement in the window caught Duo's attention and he adjusted his gaze slightly to watch the two blurry figures in the window. Trowa touched Quatre's face. Only the slightest brush of fingers across the blonde's cheekbones, but it seemed as if the two were stuck in a moment and Duo felt rotten having intruded upon it. 

He had once heard someone say that everyone feels like they're in love during wartime. There's something sadistically inticing about the romance of not knowing whether you'll live through the day that causes young hearts to bond together desperately when they might hardly notice one another under normal situations. Duo wondered if Quatre fancied himself in love, or at the very least realized how infatuated he had become with the stotic circus performer. 

Then again, there was a twisted hint of symbolism in Quatre's comfort-driven and ambiguous relationship with Trowa that Duo's prying mind had not failed to pick up on. It was a theme that underlayed the entire moral and metaphysical plane of this war they'd been fighting- were peace and war things that were dependent on each other? Or could they exist on their own in an ever changing world? 

Quatre had been raised on L4, the son and heir of a diplomatic family who were staunch believers in the original Heero Yuy's principles. Trowa never talked about his past, but from the cold, percise and almost systematic way he fought Duo would take an educated guess that the boy must have had some past connection with mercenaries or other such hired warriors. They were two people from opposite extremes of the spectrum, yet they flourised in and craved each other's company like natural kindreds (or perhaps, as war dicates young people must- doomed lovers?). 

It almost reminded Duo of Heero's interactions with the Peacecraft girl, Relena. He didn't remember much about her except that she was an oddly persistant young lass who refused to give up even after multiple death threats from her object of affection. 

Well, perhaps that wasn't fair. When Duo reflected back on it, Relena had not acted like a dreamy and star-eyed young girl lovestruck by the abnormal dark-eyed boy who had literally dropped into her world out of the sky. Rather she was a girl used to certain way of life who found that life all of a sudden turned upside down and at the center the chaos, Heero. She'd only been looking for answers and had unwittingly found herself a devotee. It wasn't so surprising, really. Heero's entire life was devoted to his mission, and his mission was to not only attain freedom for the colonies but peace for those who would embrace it. Relena was born into a legacy of pacifists and eventually decided to dedicate her life to it. The girl became a physical representation of what Heero was fighting for. Underneath his sharp, unnatural intellect, cold mechanical mannerisms and faux-heartlessness, Heero was in the end barely out of childhood and at fifteen years old would find a person much easier to hang onto in a world falling apart than some pretty ideal half the human race rejected anyways. 

_'But where do I fit into all of this?'_ Duo's sighed and closed his eyes against the dim lighting, chrome floor tiles and window-way to the stars, his mind wearying as the words worked themselves into his being. He hadn't been shaped for the war, nor was he changing because of it. He liked Hilde fine, but hardly considered himself in love with her and aside from that found himself forming no bonds that were truly extrodinary considering the stress of battle. He killed and grieved and moved on, had even expirienced his own brush in with the Zero system but nothing had truly rattled him to his core or threatened to topple his entire moral being. Duo knew why he fought (to save the other children of L2 from having to do it) and he knew where his place would be when the fighting was done. There was no strife, no internal struggle with demons and long-planted insecurities. Duo simply was. 

He opened his eyes and strode forwards the few steps across the width of the hallway and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. He shivered, imagining he could feel through it the chill of outer space beyond it, for such a thin barrier could hardly be enough to hold it out. He grinned ironically and chuckled bitterly beneath his breath, "But they'll always remember me," he murmered, speaking more to the stars than to himself, "Because I'm the God of Death..." 

**end.**


End file.
